Vocabulary is Fun Site (from the Creator of Spelling City!)

If you are an educator and don't know about Spelling City, take some time to check it out! I hadn't seen this Vocabulary is Fun site from the creator of Spelling City until Susan from Internet4Classrooms shared it with me this week.
This vocabulary site has games for students to build English vocabulary skills. Skills include analogy games, antonym games, contraction games, foreign language games, parts of speech games, prefix and suffix games, and many MORE!
Here is a description of their site:
Vocabulary is Fun is a leading vocabulary website worldwide with the best flash online word games. The vocabulary games include an online word search, an online crossword puzzle, and hangman online (our version is called HangMouse). Users choose the vocabulary list that the online word game will use in the word game. The vocabulary games are popular for use on smart boards for word games to build vocabulary skills in classrooms.

Great site!!!

I ran across this site tonight while looking for some sites for classes to use. It's 42explore Thematic Pathfinder-another free resource for teachers! Here is the description from their site:

Why start with a search engine, when you can find a pathfinder to fit your needs at 42eXplore? When learning something new, it's nice to have more than one resource to explore. This web project provides "four to eXplore" for each topic. On each page you'll find definitions, activities, the 4 good starting points, and many more links and resources for the thematic topic.

If you are looking for specific sites for a topic and you are an elementary teacher, I encourage you to check this site first to save you time! You can search by subject or click Topic index to see a list of all available.

Martin Institute Conference Thoughts

The Martin Institute for Teaching Excellence, housed in Presbyterian Day School (where I work), held it's first conference last week.  The theme of the conference was Teaching for Tomorrow. There was a lot of preparation to make this first conference outstanding and I think the goal was met! I wanted to share the wiki for the Martin Institute with you because most of the presenters shared their presentation materials on the site. I was privileged enough to get to present 3 different sessions at this conference and I felt that they were successful. Most of the sessions were Ustreamed. If you have time to watch, I highly recommend checking some of them out!
Wes Fryer was the keynote speaker on Thursday night and Tom Barrett was the speaker (skyped in) during lunch on Friday. The conference had some awesome door prizes (including 5 iPads and 3 Flip cameras) that made several people very happy when they won! There will be a spring conference and a summer conference at the Martin Institute. More info will be posted on their website for more info about the upcoming conferences.

ClassTools.net

During the TeachMeet Memphis unconference held at my school last week, a friend of mine, Melissa Smith, used this Random Name/Word Picker to select the winners of door prizes.  I thought this was such a neat tool, so I asked her where she found it. ClassTools.net is the site to find this and many other free tools to use in your classroom.
First, let me tell you about the Name Picker.  You enter your names in a box that appears and it puts them into a machine. You click Fruit Machine below and it spins the wheel to select a new student name. After it chooses a student, you can remove them so they are not selected again. This has great possibilities for classroom use.  A few ways I can think of to use it are to create groups (press it a few times in a row and those kids are all in one group), to select who answers the question, to select job helpers for the week, etc.  The possibilities are endless!!!
While you are on the ClassTools.net site,  check out the other great features they have for teachers.  Their site states "create free educational games, quizzes, activities and diagrams in seconds! Host them on your own blog, website, or intranet! No signup, no passwords, no charge!
Their site allows you to search their sample files by subject or by type. On the right side of the page, there is a list of the most popular templates. This is a great time saver for teachers!

Virtual Field Trips online

With today's economy, there are lots of cuts in school budgets.  Sometimes, this means no field trips for classes. Today's post is focusing on virtual field trips.  I recommend you consider virtual field trips for several reasons.  First, many virtual field trips are FREE.  Of course, we all love free! Second, there are many places to "take" your students when you consider virtual field trips...the possibilities are endless! If you limit your class to somewhere you can travel to on a bus, they are missing out!

Recently, I ran across this website with a great list of virtual field trips. Virtual field trips can be used with your class to learn more about places without leaving your school.  It is great to use virtual field trips because many are free and you can access locations anywhere in the world right from the computer in your classroom! Bring it to you if you can't take your students there!

Here are some other pages that list virtual field trips. 
Greene Bytes
Simple K12 Virtual Field Trips
Blackwell's Best Virtual Field Trips
The Apple's List of Top 5 Virtual Field Trips
Utah Education Network's Virtual Field Trips
Internet4Classrooms Virtual Field Trips Help
Tech Trekers Virtual Field Trips
Virtual Field Trips List
OOPS! Virtual Field Trips

Ask your parents if they have any place they could share about and then find a virtual field trip about that place.  This would be a great way to get parents involved with your class!

A virtual field trip is the next best thing to being there! Open up the window to the world right from your classroom and introduce your students to endless possibilities!
Take some time and check out the links in this article...your students will LOVE you for it!!!

If you have used virtual field trips with your class, please share the location and link of the site you have visited in the comments section on this post. If you have other sites you use, please share those as well so we can learn from each other.

iPods in the Classroom

Our school has a new iPod Touch cart for classes to use this year.  After setting the iPods up and putting apps in folders to help make it easier for students (PK-6th) to use, I rolled them out and used them with a 3rd grade class last week. It was a very exciting day...not only for our students, but for me. I really had a geek moment when they were ready for use!
Many of our teachers have attended Project Zero at Harvard. One technique they learned there is for students to create a "Headline" about various topics they are studying in class.  So, with that in mind, I came up with the first lesson. We are an all boys' school, so this lesson went right along with boys! The boys used the Create a Martian app to design the martians that were taking over the earth. They had 3 minutes to make their martian perfect! Once everyone had a martian, we took a snapshot of it by holding down the power button and the home button of the iPod, which basically takes a screen shot of the iPod screen. Then, the boys went to the Photos app and found their picture. They emailed it to their teacher (I have all teachers set up in the contacts app). The teacher printed it from her laptop to a color printer and the boys then created a headline about martians taking over the earth.
Not a bad lesson for their first introduction to the iPods. They boys worked great and really loved the chance to be creative with the martian and headline.
One thing I thought was really interesting is that with the first 7 classes I have used the iPods with, only one or two from each class had NEVER used an iPod or iPhone.  WOW!  

Twitter and @cybraryman1

Hopefully if you are an educator, you are using Twitter to connect with other people as part of your PLN (Personal Learning Network or some may call it Professional Learning Network.) It took me about six months to really “get” Twitter. If you asked me to tell you one thing I couldn’t do without as a Technology Coach, I believe the first thing out of my mouth would be Twitter.  Take some time to follow people and watch your learning grow! I few things I use Twitter for at my job are to help me solve problems with applications, get suggestions on tools to use with students, and find websites to give to teachers to use with their lessons. It really is invaluable once you begin to use it more and more.

Throughout the week, there are various educational chats happening using twitter. These can be very beneficial for educators to participate in to help hear others’ points of view and give you a chance to voice your opinion on various topics.

@cybraryman1 on twitter has created a list of all the current educational chats and when they take place on his site. I encourage you to look through the list and see what topics relate to you (for example, kinderchat for kindergarten teachers, scichat for science teachers, etc.) Find the day of the week and time that these chats are taking place and try to participate in at least one to see what it is like to learn and hear from others at a very fast pace. Many of the chats are also available for you to view at a later time in case you miss them or can’t make it. You can read through the tweets that are sent out during that chat. This is a huge benefit of Twitter-connecing people from all over the world to share thoughts, lessons, ideas, and more to help better educate our students.

While you are at @cybraryman1’s site, check it out! Block off a planning time or evening to see what he has available for educators.  I am VERY impressed with his site and think you will be also.  On the Educator’s link, he has links for teacher tools, classroom organization, and subject areas.  Each page has a TON of links to help you enhance your teaching. Just a warning, once you visit his site, you may not want to stop looking at all the great resources there!